Talk:Indecline

Misleading classifications

WikiProject Visual arts. And the Donal Trump classification does look like a clumsy attempt to get exposure. Not to mention all the available literacy around Indecline clearly tries hard to make it pass for "a new Anonymous", over their rising star the past few months, thanks to more or less authentic popular "rebellion" motos (such as anti-trumpism or A.C.A.B.) or anti-racist actions. Balayka

Introduction: a highly controversial one

The allegation of Indecline (redir. from Indecline Films) is an "activist art collective" is totally undocumented before ends of 2015. For a group that claims 17 years of activity, that's extremely disturbing regarding their genuineness, extending to their "mission statement'. Also, one will appreciate how a prominent "activist group" counting "dozens" (undocumented in the quoted sources, but by the anonymous Indecline spokeperson). Note, a writer named Jessi Phillips recently credited them with "25 core members and more than 100 auxiliary (...) artists" without supplying any source either. Even the Vimeo a/c is a clear indicator this group has only real activity since only 2 year, whilst the project was formed for Summer 2015 (the YouTube a/c). Last but not least, one might fail at understanding how an organisation whose some very public individual signs almost all production (Ryen McPherson, as per Indecline own videos description can be an "anonymous" group. Balayka

References neutrality and accuracy

Extremely low. The page does not even mention the own website of Indecline, http://thisisindecline.com, as of course, a rough examination of the scarce press coverage would immediately demonstrate what stated above - the group is only about 2 years old in its form, and its parent group, Indecline Movies, was never an activist organisation of artists, only a lucrative video production company (Inc.), subsidiary of a constellation of LLC in Nevada, whose only dramatical act consisted into exploiting human beings for profit. Then only putting on the mask of "this was a denunciation" - but not too brightly, only 5 years later. Then trying to give some credit to the story of a non-profit organisation for protesters starting ~2 years ago. Balayka

Editing controversies

Here is a fuller explanation of my reverts to two three kinds of changes. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Bumfights

An editor inserted statements in the lede and in that section of the article concerning treatment of homeless people in the making of the Bumfights video(s). One of my objections to this is that it was POV: part of the changes stated in Wikipedia's voice that the group are not real anarchists. The use of inline links is also not only deprecated but non-neutral, since it gives the impression that Wikipedia shares the position of the group whose site is linked in the text. Crucially, however, in my view it's out of the scope of this article, since we have a whole article on the Bumfights video (which already talks about the controversy). That's why I reverted both pieces of text rather than attempting to rewrite at least some of it neutrally and to convert at least one of the inline links to a footnote. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 23 August 2016 (UTC) Agreed Balayka Even though there's a dedicate page, this section is indigent and the only "source" is a. clearly non-neutral, as a benevolent interview of the main character in the story, b. almost 4 years posterior to controversial material, c. and very soon after the two sentenced individuals were sentenced to jail time. Balayka

Dying for work

The LV "Dying for work" installations, curiously enough, was only recently credited to Indecline (Aug. 2016, close to a year after the pretence of being an anonymous 'whistleblowers' movement was fully in place). Only one FoxNews article seems to support this hypothesis. Balayka

Mojave Graffiti

It sounds suspicious that dozens of "activist protesters" engage or support into polluting the Mojave through gallons of paintings and flying in the airs to take pictures of their realisation out of "global warming awareness". Also, note the video is directed by the original founder, Ryen McPherson, whom nobody seems to have investigated or put under examination after the 2014 body parts trafficking and flight to Cambodia. Balayka

Title of statues project

The Donald Trump statues were labeled on the base, and an IP editor has twice changed the section header from "Donald Trump statues" to The Emperor Has No Balls, stating that that is the project name. Most sources, however, do not refer to it primarily by that title (a corollary of being a guerilla art group is that the viewer is left to interpret the function of the name plate). Also I believe it better to avoid italicized section headers if possible in favor of descriptive headers, partly for aesthetic reasons and also because having that title in the table of contents is a BLP violation, albeit mild–the text clearly explains the context, but in the table of contents it's just there. I'm aware that Indecline's purpose in creating the work (and others) was a BLP violation, but I don't see a big reason for Wikipedia doing likewise unnecessarily when relatively few reliable sources do. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 23 August 2016 (UTC) +1 Balayka

Personal protest

An editor has added extra details and has also incorporated a section, with video link, on one person's reaction to the Trump statues. The issues raised in the protest were also raised at Feministing (I think it was), but do not rise to the level of being worth mentioning, let alone creating a separate "Reactions" section, and we certainly are not required to document this particular individual's protest, which is only tangentially related to Indecline. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:50, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Yngvadottir. The counter protest is a direct reaction and on par with the placement of the protest statues. If you have a problem with prose, fix it, but do not nuke it. Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 01:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• Great response, and I thought the original statue was fantastic, but Checkingfax please don't confuse Wikipedia with a platform for social, political, nude, or other kind of action. Drmies (talk) 02:06, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

The counter-protest is one person, reported in one newspaper, and related to one entry on a feminist blog. It's in no way "on a par with" the statues in an article about Indecline. I cannot grasp why you would think it was. If there were extensive media coverage of this protest, it might then be relevant to include; but even then the video would be coatracking. I thought of including a footnote mentioning that Feministing (I'm still not 100% sure I am remembering correctly which blog it was; see the tweet pictured in the Chronicle article) and this man both raised objections on grounds of body-shaming and implied transphobia, but even that seems to me to be way undue. There have surely been many reactions to all the group's projects. (The rape mural has received some further reactions now that the group has gotten more publicity.)Yngvadottir

• Surprisingly, even surfing on a very popular political wave of #Resistance against the 45th POTUS, not that many; which raises very high my radar regarding s mere "communication operations" Balayka I thought it important to keep the article as factual and summary-style as possible, allowing readers to (a) reach their own conclusions and (b) investigate further if they want to know how people reacted. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:08, 24 August 2016 (UTC) ::+1, but as documented in earlier paragraph, there is very little evidence of actual facts in the available summary. Balayka
• Yeah, that was sort of the intent of my edit summary, though less precise: something like this needs a serious amount of secondary sourcing, lest we report every bit of trivia as a "response". The man's protest is simply not of encyclopedic value, until a serious number of of serious secondary sources make it so. Drmies (talk) 02:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC) +1 Balayka
• I don't want to get into an(other) edit war on this page, but I do want to point out that Feministing was not the only site that criticized the Trump statue for body shaming. Here are two more examples: The Guardian and The Establishment. Funcrunch (talk) 04:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for those, especially the Guardian one. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:14, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Should this page have an AE sanction notice?

We see at Talk:Donald Trump a rather scary notice about discretionary sanctions:

{{2016 US Election AE}}

If there are continued reverts on this article I suggest that such a notice be considered. The issues on this article may seem trivial and amusing, but if the matter goes to WP:ANI there will probably be a 40,000-word thread. In the mean time I've applied semiprotection. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 03:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• Hey Ed, I think that's a stretch for this one; I think you noted in an edit summary already that you think it falls under DS. But it's not a big deal to me; I'll just go back to trolling with one of my alternate accounts. Also, thanks for keeping an eye on things, and of jumping into the fray when you think the fray needs unfraying. Drmies (talk) 03:23, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Inflammatory text covertly added with misleading edit summary and misleading incorrect line spaces

@Checkingfax: In this edit, you added the words "criminal undocumented" to "In October 2015, in response to Donald Trump calling Mexicans rapists, ...." Your edit summary was "Assisted by Citation bot | date formats per MOS:DATEFORMAT by script | Cleaned up using AutoEd | harmonize whitespace in citation templates | URL to Wikidata", which made no mention of the substantive edits you performed. Because you added a great deal of incorrect line spacing in that edit, it was impossible for editors to tell that you had added the inflammatory text, or indeed whatever other text additions you made in that edit. Can you please explain the edit, your edit summary, your addition of incorrect line spacing? And did you make any other unreported textual changes in that and/or your other edits to this article? Softlavender (talk) 03:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• Softlavender, that is a really good question. Checkingfax, I am interested in that too. Drmies (talk) 03:56, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

With respect, I think Checkingfax's motives were good. He/she clearly disagrees with my omission of details that are in relatively few of the sources or aren't about the article topic itself, likes to see the state given with every city, and believes one commissions an art work "to" someone. These are editorial decisions on which one can have varying opinions. Just as it's optional whether to have spaces between the == and the header text, or line spaces between headers and between headers and paragraph text ... and I suppose sticking a space after the = in a citation template as well as the one I put in after the item itself can be seen as "harmonization", though it boggles my mind, personally. I AGF that s/he intended the "criminal undocumented" (with its redundancy) to reflect Trump's position more accurately, and that s/he didn't realize the text changes needed to be flagged since the spacing changes would mask them. I'm still not sure I'm entirely right. I've left the butt characterization in, although it was in few sources so I thought it was excessive; according to one source, it was in the specifications given to the artist. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:09, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with all of that, Yngvy, for the record, and I would like to receive an answer from Checkingfax. And by the way, standard spacing under headers is no spacing, so he shouldn't be changing that at all, much less to hide mutiple unreported edits, especially those that are inflammatory. The next question is, how often does Checkingfax do these unreported stealth changes, obscured by adding (or even removing) line spacing so the text change doesn't show up in a diff? Softlavender (talk) 04:16, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• I don't know about this technical stuff, but putting words in Trump's mouth should best be left to Trump or one of his spokespeople--well-intentioned or not. Drmies (talk) 14:01, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I realize that these are all valid questions for Checkingfax, and you all deserve answers to them, but I'd like to say something about spacing. In view of the wording in MOS that Yngvadottir included in her comment at User talk:Checkingfax#Whitespace, newlines, and edit summaries, which I will copy here, with parts highlighted in bold:

• Spaces between the equal signs and the heading text are optional, and will not affect the way the heading is displayed. The heading must be typed on a separate line. Include one blank line above the heading, and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window (but not two or more consecutive blank lines, which will add unnecessary visible white space in the rendered page). There is no need to include a blank line between a heading and sub-heading.

speaking as a copy-editor, the spaces on between a header and the equals signs on either side of it and the space between a header and the paragraph that follows it make the text easier to read in the edit window. Since I read articles mainly in edit mode, anything that makes it easier to see the overall organization is a great help. I assure you I have not discussed this with Checkingfax either on- or off-Wiki. If these things are optional, then I do not see any reason to criticize someone for adding the spaces. I'm inclined to add them myself, but I agree that adding them is not an essential edit and that an edit summary mentioning only those types of changes should not be used to mask significant changes to content. But, I'd like to add that, it is possible that Checkingfax did not intend to hide the changes in content with his edit summary or summaries. If we've got an article on our watch list, it behooves us to look at every edit, just as I look at most edits that say merely, "Correcting typo". Sometimes it is really a correction of a typo, but sometimes the edit involves a lot more. I often see edit summaries that say, "c/e", "Tweaks", or "Minor copy-edits". Are you saying they are all hiding significant changes in content? Also, when I am doing a thorough copy-edit of an article for the Guild of Copy Editors, I do not write a very specific edit summary for every edit I make; that would add a lot of work to what is already a difficult task. I think, since in the specific case you are discussing regarding Indecline, the addition of spaces is not wrong – the spacing is optional, so not wrong – all you need to do is focus on the changes in content that Checkingfax made, and ask him about them. Softlavender: To say that something is "standard" when it is clearly optional, and then create a heading that includes "misleading incorrect line spaces" is misleading in itself. To accuse someone of doing something "covertly" before finding out for certain what Checkingfax had in mind, is not assuming good faith, it is assuming dishonesty. Not a very friendly atmosphere.  – Corinne (talk) 17:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Corinne, we have several issues here: (1) Checkingfax making unnecessary (and sometimes problematic or incorrect) script-assisted changes, in bulk -- which he has already previously been criticized for elsewhere, including on an ANI thread which he never adequately responded to in many people's opinions. (2) Adding unnecessary spacing under headers. We have far more people constantly removing those same spaces via automated and semi-automated edits, so now we have an editor undoing what the vast majority of site-wide editors normally and routinely mass conform throughout Wikipedia by removal. (3) The simultaneous and surreptitious addition of substantive textual changes, all of them unnecessary, some of them quite controversial, and none of them reported in the edit summary at all, and none of them visible in diffs because of the simultaneous addtion of line spaces. (4) Checkingfax failing to respond when these surreptitious and unreported and controversial and diff-invisible edits were questioned by three different editors (includng an administrator) on this page. (5) Checkingfax continuing to engage in this same behavior despite all of this, as detailed on his talk page. (6) You apparently coming to his rescue here when in fact it is Checkingfax that needs to respond and indeed desist, instead of you making excuses for him. Softlavender (talk) 00:20, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Softlavender All right, I understand. Thank you. I didn't know that no spaces was the preferred formatting (perhaps "optional" should be removed from MOS), and I thought all of this was just regarding one edit, but I see it is about several. I have no idea why Checkingfax is not responding.  – Corinne (talk) 14:01, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

As you can clearly tell from my contributions to the discussion, I have quite a clear idea of why there is no answer.

I've been investigating the whole "Indecline" media act as well as a good number of other small to medium media companies from the same source, and all I can say is that all pages related to this "organisation" or its not so anonymous members should be subject to AE. Balayka 19:41, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Anarchists or not?

On the current version of the page (04/13/2020) the starting summary refers to the group as an anarchist art collective. On the official indecline website they state that they are not anarchists, and I’ve now been looking for an explanation from either perspective stating why they do or don’t describe them as anarchists and I haven’t found anything. As I’ve been researching the organization more I’ve quite frankly not seen any stunts of theirs that fit the definition of anarchism. The Merriam-Webster website defines anarchism as, “ a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups “. I’ve read about and watched videos of plenty of art pieces calling out injustices in government systems or societal norms, but none that show they want the government to be abolished. I believe people are primarily calling them anarchists simply because they break the law, which is an incorrect classification. I know the societal assumed definition and dictionary definition of anarchy are very different. I haven’t done enough research into indecline to define the group in either way, and I would love any sources or opinions about anything I’ve mentioned. I apologize for a longer than necessary explanation. TL; DR : Wikipedia says they’re an anarchist group but they don’t fit the definition of anarchists. FactCheck.hmmm (talk) 02:49, 14 April 2020 (UTC)